independent, international co-productions and developing countries

Within this assignment I shall be looking at the production contexts of independent, international co-productions and developing countries within film.

Independent

An independent production is usually produced by and or distributed by a subsidiary of a major studio. For a film to even be considered independent only less than half of its total budget can be funded from a major studio. Some of those studios include: Lions Gate, Mirimax, Paramount Pictures, Fox Search Light and Think Film.

The example I shall be exploring is “Reservoir Dogs”. This was Quentin Tarantino’s break out film and one of his most notable early pieces of work. This film was going to be entirely funded by Quentin Tarantino and his friends on a budget of about $30,000 however once actor Harvey Keitel became involved who agreed to act and co-produce the filmmakers managed to raise $1.5 million to create the film. In modern day the film is heavily considered to be a cult classic. Established filmmakers can find funding through the major studios because of their own personal track record of creating movies. When breaking into such a market and trying to garner investment people are going to be incredibly reluctant to invest in someone who has yet to demonstrate their ability. This film did exactly that for Quentin Tarantino.

International co-operation film

An International co-operation film is a movie which has enlisted multiple production companies to help create the film. The amount of production companies working on the film isn’t just limited to two. It can be more however this is unlikely for profit reasons. A perfect example of a movie which is the product of international cooperation is the Harry Potter movies. These movies are created by Warner bros, an American company and Heyday films which is a company based in the UK.

When movies are created on an international basis the filmmakers together create a production treaty which gives the creators the ability to declare the film as a national production, which further allows both nations to have access to film funding services from both nations. This also allows both economies and Job markets to benefit from the production. This agreement also allows both countries to come together and offer their individual services to aid in the production such as studios, technology, cast and crew. All of which will better the entire production.

However with all these potential benefits there is of course always down sides to International co-operation. Such downsides include a loss of creative control as one company/country may want to have more control of certain aspects of the production. There are also increased costs when dealing with both nations governments. The film industry is an incredibly strong entity with competition worldwide, when working together there’s always the possibility of ulterior motives to be at play.

Developing countries

In many developing countries cinema takes on a simpler form, with low quality and low budget movies being created. However there is an incredibly strong independently operated film industry slowly beginning to emerge from such places.

These places run solely on independent movements to create the “cinema” as their economy isn’t as strong as what you’d find in western culture. Nollywood churns out many more movies that Hollywood ever will. This is primarily because of the quality being much lower than what we would expect within the west. However this doesn’t discredit the film market in third world countries at all. I’ve personally watched documentaries about these people making films with literally nothing at all. I believe the western world has a lot to learn from this emerging market. When you look at the situation properly it’s quite simple.

There’s a huge gap in the cinema market in these countries, with limited resources and wealth the people of these countries have decided to create movies for themselves simply because no one else is. A large amount of the money that these companies generate goes straight back into creating more movies.